That’s it!  I’ve survived an entire quarter of school…..45 days of students, 3 days of conferences, my first round of report cards (district AND reading for each student), extremely over-involved passive-aggressive parents, 1 bad bout with the flu, endless meetings, and only missing 1 day of work. 

And to think, only 3 more quarters to go!  In all seriousness though, school has been going really well lately.  My students have settled down and I’ve lost 2 students in the past 7 days, bringing my class down to a mere 19 students.  That does put me on the list for the next couple new students, which isn’t a good thing….most of the students who move in-district in the middle of the year (as many of ours do) do so because of trouble at their old school…..and those are the students I will be getting.

But for now, I am celebrating that my behavior students have calmed down, I’ve come to know and appreciate my students’ unique personalities, and we are making great strides academically. 

Is that I am surrounded by my DH’s family and have no family of my own within 3,000 miles.  Don’t get me wrong…I like, maybe even love DH’s family.  But they aren’t my family.  And as the holidays are rapidly approaching and I’m christmas shopping for my family, only to realize that I won’t get to spend the holidays with my family and see the gifts I picked out and lovingly wrapped, it is slowly breaking my heart. 

Over the years I’ve had ups and downs with DH’s family and I’m not as close to or comfortable with them as I would like to be.  There are some huge personality clashes, mostly with DH’s mom, that have been hard to overcome.  As a result, I still don’t think of them as “my family”, as I’ve heard many married couples do.  I do refer to them as “family”, but I still struggle to say “i love you” to anyone in his family or express any feelings towards them.

It is really starting to sink in that I won’t be celebrating Christmas in my family’s house with my family, and won’t be celebrating most of our traditions.  I’m trying to incorporate my traditions into OUR traditions (DH and I’s), but it is meshing oil and water…..he was raised SO differently than me and continues to be, it has been hard to merge our two families and backgrounds.  I feel like a petulant, spoiled child….I don’t WANT to spend Christmas with his family and do all of their traditions, I want to do mine or our own.  His family always says “we’ll be your family…..”, and I know they try hard and mean well, but it isn’t the same thing!!  They figure I can just slip right into the festivities like I’ve participated all along, but I can’t….and frankly don’t want to. 

I’m in tears right now upset about the whole holiday thing again, so I’ve got to stop for now…..

Well, I am officially up to my ears in wedding stuff. I’ve checked quite a few things off of my list this week, but there are still a lot of things left to do. Two months is going to absolutely fly by, and for that I am grateful, in spite of how frazzled that makes me.

I can not wait to be married and sharing our home and to be able to call Tom my husband.
Lately, I have been overwhelmed by what a profoundly good, sweet, intelligent and funny man I am joining my life with. Sometimes I look at him after a long day and my heart just seems to melt, the world seems softer and I feel more peaceful, more gracious, more patient. Something about Tom just soothes me. More and more, I am living for that moment when we are officially joined forever in the eyes of our society. I don’t know why, but I feel like the world will be a tiny bit more as it should be when he and I are a little family.

I really do feel like the luckiest.